The DC Extended Universe is hoping to rebuild its brand and status after widely mixed reviews from its first nine films. Still surprising to the fandom is the fact that the franchise’s major team-up movie, 2017’s Justice League , finished its theatrical run as the worst-reviewed film of the group as well as the lowest-grossing in theaters at only $657.9 million globally (pre-Covid).
Due to the switch in directors from Zack Snyder to Joss Whedon, the movie felt like a discombobulated mess from start to finish as two individual visions were forced together into one film . This disaster led fans to ferociously start the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut movement , which came to fruition in March 2021 with Zack Snyder’s Justice League premiering on HBO Max.
As it turns out, the fan reception to the four-hour redo is making things even worse for its theatrical predecessor in hindsight.
JUSTICE LEAGUE STILL HATED
Warner Bros. took to YouTube to re-upload the original 4K trailer for the theatrical cut of Justice League today, which first debuted in March 2017. In less than 12 hours, the like-to-dislike ratio is astoundingly drastic, with the trailer receiving only 750 likes to over 9,200 dislikes when last updated.
For perspective, the original trailer released in 2017 currently stands at about 446,000 likes to about 29,000 dislikes.
The trailer can be seen in its entirety below:
YES, IT CAN GET WORSE
For all the bile and vitriol that 2017’s Justice League received upon its release, fans seem to only be more passionate about their dislike of the film now. Even though the Snyder Cut wasn’t universally loved, it still did an impressive job of fixing some of the theatrical cut’s failures and showing some of what the epic saga should have been in the first place.
Looking at the vastly different directing styles of Whedon and Snyder, coupled with the disturbing dysfunction on set when Whedon came in , everything about this film made a recipe for disaster. From disjointed dialogue to mismatched tones, the only surprising result from the theatrical cut was just how bad of a film it became in the end.
With this type of fan outcry on such a new video, it will be interesting to find out what kind of action Warner Bros. decides to take for the future of the DCEU. It’s unlikely that Snyder will be brought back to finish his full vision for the rest of the story, but with the fan outcry on this video along with others, the studio certainly has some tough decisions to make in the coming years.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League and the theatrical cut of Justice League are both available to stream on HBO Max.
